Patrick Warburton is a big, beefy actor who excels at playing straight-arrow, uncomplicated types. On Seinfeld he played Puddy, Elaine's delightfully blank boyfriend. Also on his long TV résumé, he played the egomaniac Jeb on Less Than Perfect with Sara Rue, the corporate raider Johnny Johnson on NewsRadio, and the titular longwinded superhero on The Tick.

He has also done lots of voiceover work, from American Express commercials (though he admits he has never subscribed to one of their cards) to playing Joe, the Griffins' neighbor in a wheelchair, on Family Guy. His other voice credits include Disney's Kim Possible, the Buzz Lightyear TV show and video games, and Happily N'Ever After. He voiced Kronk in The Emperor's New Groove and its sequel, Kronk's New Groove. Among his better performances are as a no-nonsense NASA scientist in The Dish, and as a self-absorbed used car salesman in The Woman Chaser.

At 22, his first film was Dragonard in 1987. While filming, he did a lot of heavy drinking with costar Oliver Reed, but Warburton describes the film, accurately, as "one of the greatest pieces of shit ever made". His second film was a sequel to the first.

Warburton was raised in a family so strict and repressed that his mother sent unsigned Bible-based letters gently urging a local gay-and-out couple to repent. After his first Seinfeld appearance -- his character Puddy was using an unexplained "sexual trick" with Elaine -- Warburton received a six-page handwritten letter from his father, scolding him for a performance that showed "no sanctity for sex."